The World Over – Artificial (EP Review)

Posted on August 5, 2021 by walladmin

The World Over – Artificial EP
Released: 11 August 2021

Line-up:

Tiaday Rocke // Vocals
Ryan Knecht // Lead Guitar
Christian Rivera // Rhythm Guitar
Juan Argüello // Bass
Alejandro Mercado // Drums

Online:

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Official Website

If there was ever a town that was built to produce musicians, Los Angeles, California is that town and that’s where hard-rocking five-piece The World Over hail from. The band themselves have claimed that they are “fueled by their desire to break down the restrictive genre barriers of today’s music industry”, and on their upcoming EP Artificial they’ve done that rather successfully.

The EP opens with ‘Bittersweet’, and although musically it’s a really strong opener what struck me most was frontwoman Tiaday Rocke’s vocal performance. She easily switches between both clean and unclean vocals, and both are great. Her cleans have a rather pretty tone to them, whilst her unclean vocals are easily decipherable and pronounced. The track opens almost as a passable radio rock tune, but by the end it’s dancing somewhere in the post-hardcore world and while that shouldn’t work, it does, and quite well!

‘Shallow’ is up next and it’s melodic in some places, and hard-hitting in others. Guitarists Ryan Knecht and Christian Rivera put some impressing work in on this track, both the lead and rhythm parts fitting together in a complimentary way and are just pleasing to the ear. I could go on all day about how much of a great vocalist Rocke is, with her impressive range and tone. I’d love to see her on a track with the likes of Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, Drown This City’s Alex Reade, or even Evanescence’s Amy Lee. Those powerhouse voices all combined together would be a truly awesome sight to see and to hear as they would also intertwined with each other nicely. I really hate when people try to justify ‘female-fronted’ as a genre when it’s not, but to not say these incredible women voices would work well together would be blasphemy. ‘Shallow’ is really the standout track on this EP for me and is definitely my favourite of the four.

Starting off the second half of the EP is ‘To Be Human’, and it slides back into that half radio-rock and half post-hardcore genre, reminding me in some parts of old-school Bring Me The Horizon, and of Escape The Fate in others. Knecht pulls off some once-again rather impressive guitar parts, especially during the verses. The breakdown in the track also hits you almost out of nowhere, but it’s hard not to just lose yourself and get lost in it. Alejandro Mercado really holds the whole track together musically with his methodically drums in parts, and syncopated beats in others without being overbearing.

‘Taking Back Control’ is the fourth and final track of the EP and my only real complaint about the track is that it’s only just over two and a half minutes long. I would say it’s the most ‘different’ track on the record musically, but still ties in nicely with the previous three tracks. The band take advantage of some synthesized and electronic elements to Rocke’s vocal performance which brings in a new layer of different to the track and the EP. Once again it’s really solid musically with everything being cohesive both technically and performance-wise.

In its short four-tracks, Artificial manages to cover multiple genres from rock, to post-hardcore, to metal, and even to punk in some aspects as well. It’s an especially well-rounded EP musically and has a cohesion that I wasn’t really expecting but was thoroughly impressed by. The World Over have nowhere to go but up from here, and it’s great to see a young band challenging expectations of the current music industry and really making music that they believe in.